If it looked like abuse from the beginning, you would have never stayed. The cycle of narcissistic abuse begins with trust and leads to devastation. It works because you are pulled into a dream and find yourself lost in the dark, reaching out for the one person who could save you. But that one person is the one person who is destroying you. And when you have handed over all of your power to someone else, how can you just leave?
What I find comical is how special narcissists think they are. Yet, they follow the same playbook and are not unique at all. It’s an inevitable cycle. One that is meant to feed the narcissist and trap their supply. The pattern of love-bombing, devaluation, discard, and sometimes hoovering, is the narcissist’s ammo.
When you met your narc you undoubtedly felt like the most special person in the world. You were told you were their soulmate, that they never felt the way they do with you with anyone else. You were showered with love, affection, and gifts. You never knew life could be so good or that you could meet someone so perfect. So you opened yourself up, giving everything you had to the narcissist because that is what love looked like to you.
Slowly overtime and without you realizing it, you gave more than what you were receiving and you were no longer being love-bombed. But you were so in love and devoted you didn’t ask for more, until you did. You started to have needs, or you started seeing inconstancies in them. You started to realize that there were secrets, lies, that things weren’t adding up. And once you saw the mask starting to slip, everything changed because it had to.
Nothing you did was right. You were “too emotional” or were “acting crazy”. If you sensed there was cheating or an affair, you might have been accused of being the one cheating. All of a sudden everything you were seeing, living, feeling, wasn’t really happening. You were told over and over again that your reality was wrong. You were being gaslighted to a point that you started to feel crazy and made yourself so small just so you could fit into their world. They started talking down to you or making you feel unloveable and worthless. You had just found yourself in the devaluation phase.
You were kept there living in fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, losing yourself everyday. You couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t think straight. You doubted everything you saw, everything you felt, and every word you spoke. Life was falling apart and you were trying to find a way to hold on. You had moments of kindness sprinkled in just enough to make you continue to fight. But those moments didn’t last long and you began to try harder like a gambling addict, trying to get another win. You were fading away mentally and physically, living in constant fear. And then what you feared the most finally happened. You were discarded as if you never mattered.
It didn’t end the way a normal relationship ends. There was never an apology, acknowledgment of any pain caused. They looked at you as if they were a robot as you fell into a million pieces. Their eyes looked black, and the person you loved was no longer there. Your world fell apart and you couldn’t control your emotions. That’s when the smear campaign began. The narcissists had to get ahead of the truth, telling everyone how crazy you are, so you would never be believed. They made you react and showed everyone your reactions to “prove” you were crazy. You were meant to be isolated and broken forever.
If you are lucky, you will never have to see them again, as hard as it is. But that would be too easy. Some will come back in a stage called “hoovering”. It’s meant to pull you back in. But nothing will change, you would be pulled right back into the same cycle.
The abuse doesn’t stop at the end of a relationship. Once the smear campaign has been set into motion, they move on quickly as if you never meant anything at all. They found a new supply (or maybe the supply had been there all along). Their next trick is to parade them around you, making you think that they are admired, wanted, and are better off without you. If you are even more unlucky, the divorce becomes brutal. There will be hiding of assets making the division of what you had together nearly impossible.
If you have kids, it will be a never ending battle of them trying to manipulate the kids so that they never believe what they have done. They will use the kids against you to hurt you. They will keep money away from you, not caring how it affects them, making sure you can’t support them on your own. As long as you are being hurt, they win. And they will always be there, always trying to hurt you.
And now you look back, confused at what the hell just happened.
